[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Scrollbars [patch]

[The User <speyer1@xxxxxxxx>]

luke.lindsay@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,Internet writes:
>
>> Here is my proposed fix to the isometric scrollbar bug.  It does away
>with
>> the scrollbars entirely and replaces them with eight buttons.  This is,
>> IMO, much more than scrollbars.  It also solves the difficulty I
>> had when I first began using isometric of matching what happens on the
>big
>> and small maps.
>
>Could I chip in and add a suggestion?
>
>IMHO, a more elegant  solution would be a system like that used in
>black&white.  The user would click on an empty tile and drag the mouse to
>scroll the view.  The map would scroll so that the tile the user started
>dragging on would stay beneath the mouse cursor as they dragged the mouse.
>For long distance moves, the user would use the map overview.
>
>The advantages of this are:
>1    The screen real estate used by the buttons/scroll bars is reclaimed.
>2    You can scroll in any direction, not just up/down, left/right,
>+diagonal.
>3    It is more powerful than centring the map because the user is given
>continuous feedback instead of having to make a mental calculation to
>determine where to click to get the desired view.
>

This sounds like a good idea.  I don't know enough gtk to implement it
but I'm sure there are many on this list that do. 

I think there should still be something for newbies (who might not be
comfortable with this or who might not know about it (it should be
possible to play the game without reading all the documentation first). 
More experienced players who care about screen real estate will probably
want to hide it.  

I think it means putting pointers to the widgets somewhere into a
namespace (or can they be accessed through the table?).  It would also
(with the present implementation) slow ly leak memory.  That could be
fixed with something like:

gpointer dircons(int x,int y){
  return((gpointer)(((x+4)<<4)|(y+4)));
}

int dircar(gpointer cons){
  return(((((int)(cons))&0xF0)>>4)-4);
}

int dircdr(gpointer cons){
  return(((int)(cons)&0x0F)-4);
}

Other than that, it should be pretty simple.  We could even include the
scrollbars as an option (the work decently in overhead view).  The
switching commands could go in the view menu.

Just some ideas
--Daniel Speyer
"May the /src be with you, always"

P.S. I'm coming to realize how little I know about GTK.  Does anyone
have some recomendations for how I should learn it?


>anyway, just my thoughts,
>
>Luke Lindsay
>
>
>
>